Laptop for Engineering Student?

Matthew K

Matthew K

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Broke Engineer
I'm going off to engineering school in the fall so I'm looking at getting a new laptop. My current one isn't useful beyond normal web browsing. I've got a pretty decent desktop that I'll be bringing to my dorm, but I want something that can run solid works and other design software nicely that I'm able to take to class and not have to be at my dorm when I want to work on things. I don't need it to be a full out gaming styled laptop as I want to still have some decent battery life and portability.

I know there are quite a few engineering guys on here so was wondering if anyone had any suggestions or experience with a specific model of laptop.

Budget would be to ideally stay below the $1500 mark.
 
Almost all laptops will be good. IMO, the #1 most important item that that I've seen scrimped on is memory. Please do not try to get by with only 4GB...8 is minimum and more is better. At 4 GB you pretty much will only be able to open a web browser and maybe email. After that you start getting into memory swapping and your disk runs 1000 times slower than your CPU, so you will never get the full power of your CPU going.

About 5 years ago my corporate computer had 4GB and a quad core processer. By using Resource Monitor, I discovered that 2 of the CPUs were permanently parked and the other 2 were running at between 10 and 15%, all because the computer was waiting on the disk swap. I added 8 GB and suddenly I had a speed demon. I sent my results to the help desk and 4 weeks later everyone was getting memory upgrades.

You should be able to get a lot of good systems for under 1.5k.
 
bflynn said:
Almost all laptops will be good. IMO, the #1 most important item that that I've seen scrimped on is memory. Please do not try to get by with only 4GB...8 is minimum and more is better. At 4 GB you pretty much will only be able to open a web browser and maybe email. After that you start getting into memory swapping and your disk runs 1000 times slower than your CPU, so you will never get the full power of your CPU going.

About 5 years ago my corporate computer had 4GB and a quad core processer. By using Resource Monitor, I discovered that 2 of the CPUs were permanently parked and the other 2 were running at between 10 and 15%, all because the computer was waiting on the disk swap. I added 8 GB and suddenly I had a speed demon. I sent my results to the help desk and 4 weeks later everyone was getting memory upgrades.

You should be able to get a lot of good systems for under 1.5k.
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My desktop has 16gb of ram along with a 500gb SSD (along with 8TB's worth of normal hard drive storage for videos and different things :D) so I definitely agree those two things are absolutely critical.
 
Looking at the SolidWorks site, 8 Gb RAM, and Win8 or newer running 64 bit is the minimum. Didn't look at the graphics cards tho.
 
Depends what type of engineering. If you are running cad you may need a better graphics card. For ms office type stuff a basic laptop should be fine.
 
Even with a decently power laptop, I hate trying to do engineering on one because of the small display. Maybe it's partly my aging eyes, but having two large displays on my desk is so nice compared to squinting at that little laptop screen.
 
Take a look at the Dell XPS 13. It is light, small, and well constructed with a metal shell. Battery life is impressive. I've seen as much as 11 hours quoted and I that wouldn't surprise me at all. I don't know what your processing requirements might be so check out those specs to see if it can do what you need. Lots of YouTube reviews of it, too.

I bought the first generation XPS 13 back in 2015 as I take it on the road with me for about half of each month. I've carried a laptop with me (as an airline pilot) since around 1993. Portability and the ability to withstand the rigors of travel are top priorities for me and the XPS 13 is the best I've seen. The SSD drive is, I believe, a key factor in the light weight, small size, and long battery life so look for that no matter what you decide.
 
Half Fast said:
Maybe it's partly my aging eyes, but having two large displays on my desk is so nice compared to squinting at that little laptop screen.
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Since he's just now off to engineering school, I'm guessing that he's young enough that his eyes still work--unlike us old folks who need all the zoom features! LOL
 
PaulS said:
Depends what type of engineering. If you are running cad you may need a better graphics card. For ms office type stuff a basic laptop should be fine.
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This. What kind of engineering?

If software engineering you’re going to get into running multiple virtual machines or containers and the specs are going to go up massively.

That is, if the school is actually teaching anything useful.
 
Depends on how complex your SolidWorks models are and how much time you spend in SolidWorks every day. If you're going to spend 4 hours a day in SolidWorks, the difference between a 1 minute render and a 15 minute render will determine whether you have any hair left at the end of the course. If it's a once a week for an hour thing, then it doesn't really matter.


For high-end CAD, you should really look at a Quadro graphics card. You can get away with a GTX1070 or Titan X, but don't go lower than that. (Also the Quadro's are cheaper than the high-end GeForce cards).

I have a Sager laptop with dual GTX1080 cards. It works well for games, but is still not where I want it for CAD. If I had to do it over I'd get a Quadro Pascal.


In that price-range, you can maybe look at something like a Lenovo ThinkPad P50 with a Quadro M2000M. The ThinkPad P* series have a range of available laptops with Quadro's.

If you can find a refurb MSI WS63, that would be sweet. Otherwise they're a bit expensive.

Alternatively, you can customize a Dell Precision 7720 and add a Quadro P3000 for close to your price range, but I can't in good consciousness recommend a Dell right now. I had to send back the last 4 laptops they sent me last year.


Having said that, if you don't spend hours a day using it for design, don't bother with any of these.
 
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kgruber said:
m.2 ssd drive..................fastest type of SSD
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Not quite. M.2 is a connector/interface format, not a bus format.

Connected to the M.2 is a SATA, USB, PCIe, I2C, SDIO, UART, PCM and DisplayPort bus (can be a subset as well).

The "fastest" type of SSD are those running on the PCIe bus over M.2.

The ones shipping with that Acer is instead running SATA over M2. That's no faster than a standard SATA connected 2.5" SSD - it's just a smaller form factor.
 
I suspect heavy CAD and modeling is going to be done on a workstation anyway, so I wouldn't go too heavy end on a laptop. I'm using a Lenova Yoga, which is kind of nice because, in addition to being very thin, it folds all the way back over so you can use it as a tablet if you want to. And it has more than enough horsepower for anything I throw at it, which is mostly MS Office stuff plus some light graphics. It was under $1,000.
 
denverpilot said:
This. What kind of engineering?

If software engineering you’re going to get into running multiple virtual machines or containers and the specs are going to go up massively.

That is, if the school is actually teaching anything useful.
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By the time he gets through the ******** common core courses he’s going to need a new computer anyway.
 
Sac Arrow said:
I suspect heavy CAD and modeling is going to be done on a workstation anyway, so I wouldn't go too heavy end on a laptop. I'm using a Lenova Yoga, which is kind of nice because, in addition to being very thin, it folds all the way back over so you can use it as a tablet if you want to. And it has more than enough horsepower for anything I throw at it, which is mostly MS Office stuff plus some light graphics. It was under $1,000.
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Depends on the school. We used our laptops for everything (including CAD) at mine. There may have been workstations somewhere, but I don’t know anyone that used them. I hear different things from students of other schools.
 
Matthew K said:
I'm going off to engineering school in the fall so I'm looking at getting a new laptop. My current one isn't useful beyond normal web browsing. I've got a pretty decent desktop that I'll be bringing to my dorm, but I want something that can run solid works and other design software nicely that I'm able to take to class and not have to be at my dorm when I want to work on things. I don't need it to be a full out gaming styled laptop as I want to still have some decent battery life and portability.

I know there are quite a few engineering guys on here so was wondering if anyone had any suggestions or experience with a specific model of laptop.

Budget would be to ideally stay below the $1500 mark.
Click to expand...
Which school?
 
denverpilot said:
This. What kind of engineering?

If software engineering you’re going to get into running multiple virtual machines or containers and the specs are going to go up massively.

That is, if the school is actually teaching anything useful.
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Mechanical engineering is the plan
John221us said:
For a second monitor, I have a travel monitor like this (powers off the USB 3.0 port, so only one cable and packs into my laptop bag).
https://smile.amazon.com/ASUS-MB169...qid=1521746127&sr=8-5&keywords=travel+monitor
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How's the delay on that? I've seen reviews on similar monitors powered off of USB and the "lag" has been quite noticeable on video and games.
 
Matthew K said:
How's the delay on that? I've seen reviews on similar monitors powered off of USB and the "lag" has been quite noticeable on video and games.
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Sorry, I don't really play video games. My uses include MS Office, Visio, remote server management, scripting, etc. I have not noticed any lag, but like I said, I am not playing video games. It is nice to have the extra monitor real estate when I am on the road or collaborating in a conference room and it is has been perfect for that.
 
kgruber said:
Nope! MUCH faster!!
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What's the model number of the SSD you have?

I've found 3 reviews on this that said it was a SATA SSD, and one review that said the M.2 slot on the Acer isn't even keyed for PCIe - only for SATA.
 
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kgruber said:
In device manager it comes up as HFS256G39TND=N210A


Here it is on Amazon.
https://www.amazon.com/256GB-based-solid-Hynix-HFS256G39TND-N210A/dp/B075R93L6S
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Yeah, that's a M.2 SATA, not M.2 PCIe.

Directly from the link above:
* Form Factor: M.2 2280, SATA based

The perf difference of a SATA vs. PCIe SSD is quite dramatic. (The cost difference as well).

The Hynix perf from the link above above:
* Read : Up to 530MB/s(128/256/512GB)
* Write : Up to 190MB/s(128GB), 370MB/s(256GB), 470MB/s(512GB)

vs. perf of a M.2 PCIe device like the Samsung EV960:
* Sequential Read Speeds up to 3200MB/s
* Sequential Write Speeds up to 1900MB/s


Also, here is a traditional 2.5" SATA SSD (no M.2) that has similar perf to the M.2 Hynix above:
https://www.amazon.com/Samsung-2-5-Inch-Internal-MZ-75E250B-AM/dp/B00OAJ412U

So just pointing out - M.2 is not the only think to look for. Need to look for M.2 PCIe specifically.
 
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And the whole M.2 SATA vs M.2 PCI-e thing really doesn’t matter unless you’re seeing a regular need to push more than 600 MB/sec to storage or pull it.

It’ll make the OS load a second or so faster into RAM and initial applications to fill RAM, and then the machine sits mostly idle.

Nothing like how dramatic spinny disks to SSD were.

If if upping the SSD to a PCI-e variety makes a significant noticeable difference, the machine is probably swapping and needs RAM. Or you’re editing video.
 
Matthew K said:
but I want something that can run solid works and other design software nicely that I'm able to take to class and not have to be at my dorm when I want to work on things
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Everyone so far has covered the typical specs for laptops fairly well so I won't repeat that.

@Mtns2Skies didn't actually find his laptop at all useful for working on campus. He ended up using the engineering labs at our university because they had the specific CAD software as well as much bigger screens. If you're not attached to the idea of a laptop, before you put a ton of money into it, I'd check the school's engineering labs to see if that would work too.
 
Mtns2SkiesBetterHalf said:
@Mtns2Skies didn't actually find his laptop at all useful for working on campus.
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Oh! Working!

Sheesh. And here I used my Toshiba back in the day to catch up on rec.aviation in classes where self-important profs who took attendance and counted it toward grades, read directly from the textbook, in the assumption that we all couldn’t read.

I didn’t know we were spec’ing a machine for work. I thought we were spec’ing a machine for college, that place they won’t kick you out of if you keep paying them money. :)
 
Oh, I hated that! My surveying prof was from Pakistan, and couldn't speak English. He stood in front of the class and read the book, in terribly broken english. At least he used the tests from the previous year, that were in my frats test file.

And..............The University of Washington has turned into a foreign school. Now I'm going to shut up!
 
kgruber said:
Oh, I hated that! My surveying prof was from Pakistan, and couldn't speak English. He stood in front of the class and read the book, in terribly broken english. At least he used the tests from the previous year, that were in my frats test file.

And..............The University of Washington has turned into a foreign school. Now I'm going to shut up!
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Must have been an interesting class, to be from a land where property boundaries are marked by IED's and elevation shots are done with AK's.
 
I am old. I remember when schools started requiring calculators instead of slip sticks. :eek:
 
kgruber said:
Oh, I hated that! My surveying prof was from Pakistan, and couldn't speak English. He stood in front of the class and read the book, in terribly broken english. At least he used the tests from the previous year, that were in my frats test file.

And..............The University of Washington has turned into a foreign school. Now I'm going to shut up!
Click to expand...

The mistake on the lake is a good place to avoid. GO COUGS!!!

What's this laptop stuff? When I started engineering school the question was, "Which slide rule should I get?" Pickett N4-ES Double Log!

Now, lots and lots of RAM and an SSD. Good graphics capability, as well. Add a spinning media drive for storage. And a backup system, especially for the SSD. Remember, when an SSD dies there is no way to recover the data, unlike a spinning media drive.
 
Skip Miller said:
What does the school recommend? I would start from there....
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Nope. No way, no how. Okay, I'm biased by watching a horrible example of a school recommending computers so that they got a better deal when they purchased computers and software. The computers were dead-ends since they were not compatible with anything. Okay, I'm old. Maybe this doesn't happen anymore. Sure. Humans are all honest and above-board on business deals.
 
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